


Supergirl Origins

by FlyingPigPoet



Series: There Oughta Be a Superhero Handbook [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-11 13:01:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11148954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingPigPoet/pseuds/FlyingPigPoet
Summary: The start of Season One, with some background and "missing scenes" and missing pov.





	1. When Things Don't Go According to Plan

By day, Kara Danvers worked at CatCo Worldwide Media, fetching lattes and art layouts, planning galas and writing termination letters, doing the work that kept the media mogul Cat Grant doing her media magic.

But by night, in her sleep, she was not Kara Danvers. She was Kara Zor-El, and she dreamed of the destruction of Krypton, her planet coming apart in a wave of fire and a shockwave that knocked her pod off course. First yellow and orange, fragments of a planet once her home. Then black, blue, the eerie starlight in a region of space where time did not pass. Fire then stars. Destruction and then... nothing... for years. Waking up for seconds at a time only to be dragged down into sleep by the drug running through the ventilation system.

And then something changed. And then she landed on Earth and Kal-El, little baby Kal-El, now a grown man and a superhero, was explaining about the Phantom Zone and Earth customs and the family of the House of Danvers.

And when she woke to a beeping alarm and yellow sunlight coming through the windows, she was once again Kara Danvers, at least until night fell once more.

//

Take a typical Monday. Kara took the bus from her apartment to Noonan's, where she picked up her muffin and Cat's soy latte and argued on the phone about theater tickets for Cat's mother, for instance, or where Cat would be seated at the Correspondant's Dinner. She walked back to CatCo, having started her day at least half an hour before her day officially started, at least according to the HR people. But Cat started early, so everybody else did too.

Luckily, one of those people was Winn Schott, her best friend at CatCo. As he often did, he met her at the elevator that Monday with an excited appeal for her to look at his tablet, where he had an article on aliens.

"So there was this robbery last night. There were no witnesses except this homeless guy, who swears the perp had horns. On his head! I'm telling you they're out there! Aliens!"

"Winn," Kara laughed. "There's no such thing as aliens."

"You might feel differently if you read this website."

"You write that website."

"I... contribute. Hey, um, I was wondering if you'd like to, I don't know, go to a movie tonight..."

Kara set down Cat's mail and the coffee and food on her desk. "I can't, actually. I'm sorry. I have a date!" She grinned.

"A date. Really. That's... great. Dating is... fun. Who's that with?"

"An online date. Says we are 82% compatible, so that should be good."

"Um, you know you can't quantify emotions based on an algorithm, right?"

"Winn, you're IT. Isn't your life based on algorithms?"

"Yeah, so if there were an algorithm for love, I think that I would know about it. You're going to know when it hits you, Kara. It'll be all WAPOW!"

Kara's superhearing kicked in. She could hear Cat in her personal elevator muttering to herself. "This elevator is a human Petrie dish. It's like standing up in coach!"

"She's here!" whispered Kara, standing up.

Winn stood too, muttering, "How do you do that?"

The elevator door opened and Cat Grant strode out saying, "The only reason I bought this building was the private elevator. That way I don't have to get soaked in cheap cologne every morning getting to my office. Find whoever used it. Have them reprimanded or bathed. I don't care which."

Kara hurried to follow her into her office. "You're latte. Hot."

"Well, that'll be new and different." She took the cup, pulled off her catseye sunglasses and moved to her desk, the altar of CatCo Media. "I have a meeting with the Board today so cancel sushi with my mother. And cancel my therapist. I won't be needing it if I'm not having lunch with my mother."

Kara hurriedly scribbled notes on her pad. 

Cat sipped her latte, made a face and dropped in the trash. "Also, I've made a list. Prepare termination letters for the Tribune employees as noted. But it would be so nice if you handwrote them. Use the lesser cardstock."

Kara frowned. "You're downsizing the Tribune? But that was your first acquisition."

Cat ignored her. "Go see if the new art director has the layout ready."

Kara swallowed, imagining people finding out that their lives had just radically changed overnight. She knew what that was like.

Cat didn't bother looking up. "It's not that I don't see your frown. It's just that I don't care enough to ask why it's there."

"All those people, they're going to lose their jobs. What's going to happen to them, to their families? They don't have to downsize at the Daily Planet."

That got Cat's attention, and reminded Kara why it wasn't always wise to get Cat Grant's attention.

"Metropolis has a person who wears a cape and flies around performing heroic acts. The Planet puts this superlative person on their cover 54% of the time. YOu want to save the Trib? Go find me a hero, Keira."

And Kara walked out of the office, muttering, "Kara."

But she had to admit, at least it was better than the early days when Cat called her Carly, Karen, Kylie, Kris and Karina. And she thought, Lesson number one: pick your battles.

//

The last art director had been a woman, small and flighty, but very creative. She and Cat never got along, but Cat respected her vision and mostly left her alone. But, from what Winn had said, she had undergone a midlife crisis and flown off to Hollywood to take a job her ex-husband had told her about in set design. The few short films she had been involved with were pretty, Kara thought, although nothing worthy of the Oscar nominations she had gotten. But then Kara's art expertise was mostly in watercolors, so what did she know?

The new art director was still just moving in. She went down to his office and saw all the half-unpacked boxes. She really hoped the man wasn't spending his time unpacking when he really needed to be coming up with ideas that would wow Cat Grant.

"Hello? Ms. Grant sent me down for the art layouts and she doesn't like to wait."

In the small room next to the main office, she saw a tall black man with no hair unpacking a box. "She can wait a minute," he said, unconcerned.

"Have you met Ms. Grant?"

"Yeah, and what is she going to do? Fire me right after hiring me? Her loss."

He stood up and turned around and when their eyes met, he smiled. "Hey, I'm the new guy."

She smiled back and then saw next to him that famous picture of Superman in flight over Metropolis. "Oh!" she said. "It's him! I've seen this picture like a million times. It won a Pulitzer. Wow." She picked it up, feeling nostalgia. She barely ever saw Kal-El.

"Yeah, only because it was the first real shot of him. Little secret, he actually posed for that. Guess he liked me."

She stared. "Oh my God, you're Jimmy Olsen, the photographer from the Daily Planet."

"James Olsen. Well, Jimmy's reserved for my mom and the big guy. He's kind of stuck in his ways."

And Kara realized that this man probably knew her cousin much, much better than she did. "Um, I know what I've read, but... what's he like in real life?"

"He is everything you want him to be and more? I mean, I was scared to move out here, but he told me that the biggest risk is never taking any, so..."

She smiled sadly. It was easy for Kal-El to say something like that. He had figured out how to be what he was, both human and Kryptonian.

James said, "Take it."

"This? Oh, God, no, I can't!"

"It's just a print. Please, take it."

She stared at him.

"But first you have to tell me who you are. I never got your name."

"Gosh! Um, Kara." She shook his hand. "Kara Danvers."

He asked, "Did anyone ever tell you that you look a little like him right here?" He pointed to her eyes.

She gaped. "Oh, no. No. No, you're the first. Um, thank you. Very much." She turned to leave.

"Of course. Um, layouts?"

"Oh, forgot them! Right!" She took the layouts and hurried out, muttering, "WAPOW!"

The rest of the day flew by in a haze. She spent two hours writing out the termination letters for the Tribune employees, trying to phrase them in a way that expressed more compassion than she thought Cat would have thought necessary. And every so often, she found herself distracted by the thought of broad shoulders and white teeth and kind chocolate brown eyes. Maybe this was what Winn was talking about, what Eliza had insisted would one day happen when she met the right person.

But he was a coworker. And one of the things that Alex had warned her about when she got her first job in high school, delivering pizzas on her bicycle (in part because employees got a 40% discount), was never getting involved with a coworker. That never ended well, Alex had insisted. Never. Not like Alex knew about that, since she barely ever dated herself, but Kara believed in her big sister's wisdom implicitly. So she cut off the thoughts and feelings that were intruding on her work and focused on--

She looked at the time and realized Cat had already left work, Winn had left, and it was 5:30 and she had a date and she didn't have a clue about what to wear. She hadn't had a date in a year. She had never been good at these antiquated Earth customs that pretty much inherently were non-intuitive, unnatural, the kind of thing that humans invented to make the irrational parts of life more navigable. 

But Alex had never been the best guide. And Eliza had met Jeremiah in college where many Earth couples met and bonded. But Kara had found no one in college who could keep up with her intellect and/or put up with her nerdy awkward ways. And now she worked with Winn, who was the best friend a girl could ask for. And she had to rely on online dating to find someone who might be an 82% match.

Was it fair? No. But Alex was single too, and Alex was amazing. So maybe the Danvers girls simply needed to wait a little bit longer to find the people they were meant to be with.

//

There were a lot of things that Kara loved about her loft. The lack of closet space was not among them. The floor to ceiling windows that let in the Earth's yellow sunlight was a huge plus. The fact that the sunlight was falling freely on her long clothes rack, pointing out just how many of her blouses, dresses and cardigans were in pastel colors was something that she only just realized was annoying. How was she supposed to be taken seriously by a guy, by a potentially 82% compatible guy, wearing pink?

The firm knock on her door gave her a feeling of relief. She ran to open it to show her very, very capable big sister, dressed in black, saying, I have a conference in Geneva and I need to be on a plane in two hours."

"I have a blind date in half an hour and I need you to help me pick out what to wear. I win."

Alex strode in. "Why do you do this to me?"

"Because I'm your sister and you love me?"

Alex pulled out one blouse after the other. Kara threw herself on her couch. "I don't know. I feel like I'm not living up to my potential. I went to work for Cat Grant because I thought working in a media company run by a powerful woman who shapes the way people think would be the way that I could make a difference. But instead I just fetch layouts and coffee."

Alex sighed. "You always wanted to be normal! So, having a crappy boss and absolutely nothing to wear? This is what normal looks like."

Kara jumped up. "I am not normal! I have the same powers he does. I can lift a bus, stop a bullet. Alex, I can fly! At least I think I can. I haven't done it in years."

"Kara, you have a good job, you're cute, and thanks to your alien DNA, you can't get pimples. Life is not so bad. But, if you really want to help somebody, pick between one of these two so I can get on my plane."

Kara hummed and then pointed to the red blouse. 

"Good choice! When in doubt, go with blue. It is your color." She put the red shirt away. "Now, text me every detail from your date and I will call you when I'm back from Geneva."

Alex pulled her into a big hug, said, "Love you," and hurried out.

Kara just looked longingly at the picture of Superman over Metropolis and wondered if never getting pimples was worth always feeling like she should be doing more.


	2. When You Have to Make a Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Kara strode, still dripping, into her apartment, elated and cold. She stripped off her wet clothes in the bathroom and stood under the hot shower, reliving the excitement and terror and lightning fast physics decisions, the use of her muscles, the use of her brain.
> 
> The terrified beating of the passengers' heartbeats turned to cheering. For her. For what she could do.
> 
> For what she had always been able to do, if the people who loved her most had only let her."

Kara Danvers often wondered why there wasn't a dating handbook, like How to Understand Earth Males 101, for example, or Earth Dating Rituals for the Confused Alien. If she ever figured out the rules, she was totally going to write one. She would make a mint. She was sure there were a lot more aliens than simply two refugee Kryptonians on Earth. Their minds had to be just as boggled as hers.

Take her blind date. She arrived early, punctuality on Krypton having been a sign of politeness and respect. The bar was lit blue and purple, very modern from an Earth perspective, with lots of chrome and sophisticated people drinking sophisticated-looking drinks. The guy she was meeting, Todd Something, was seven minutes late. (Alex would have said, Strike One, but Kara was willing to accept that National City traffic could be a problem, so she let it pass.)

He was cute enough, she supposed: short hair, clean shaven, wearing a navy blazer over a print shirt. He asked, "So, where are you from originally?"

"Oh, uh, er, you mean where was I born? Um, north." Inside she cringed as he frowned. Maybe both sides could have strikes?

"What about you?" she asked.

But his phone buzzed and he looked at it and laughed. "I gotta hit this back real quick," he said, stepping away from the table. Kara was certain that counted as a strike.

She sat waiting for him. How long could it take to return a message? But he didn't come back. So she used her superhearing to locate him at the exit of the bar, signing a check and saying to the waitress, "Make sure your number's on it."

Strike Three, for sure. She sipped her martini, wishing Earth alcohol could numb her hurt the way it seemed to for humans. A couple at a table nearby had their heads close together and were stroking each other's arms. She looked away, focused on the flat-screen TV, the National City Heroes vs. the Boston Red Sox. Three strikes indeed. In the corner of her eye, the couple moved off toward the exit together. Well, at least somebody was capable of hitting the ball out of the park.

But there was a shift, breaking news. "If you're just joining us, shortly after takeoff, National City Airlines Flight 237 bound for Geneva is experiencing some loss of altitude. The pilot seems to be circling the city after apparent engine failure. Again, we have no information--"

"Did he say Geneva? Alex!"

Kara ran out of the bar. Sirens were splitting the night and far above National City's skyscrapers, an airplane like a comet was flying low, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. Kara tore off her glasses and narrowed her eyes, looking through buildings and inside the airplane, where, yes, Alex was looking tense, but helping another woman in the seat beside her.

Kara dove into a blind alley, pulling off her jacket and throwing it into a puddle. She ran and tried jumping into the air but the once-familiar action was no longer muscle memory as it had been when she and Alex had sneaked out for night flights. She kept running, Alex the only thing on her mind, and this time when she leaped, her whole body became a torpedo bolting into the night sky.

She chased the plane, twirling to a pause to assess the damage. It was only flaring off one side, the right wing, so she probably just needed to blow out the fire and guide it--

But then the left engine blew and fire was coming from both sides. She could hear the pilot shouting, "We just lost another engine! Mayday, mayday, mayday!" She could hear Alex's heartbeat speed up, although compared to the heartbeats of the men and women surrounding her, hers was almost calm, but Kara would set aside that observation for another time.

There was no time. The left engine broke free and Kara had to cross her arms in front of her face to block the explosive equipment, sending it into fragments that she hoped would do less damage when they hit the ground than the whole engine would have done.

People on the ground were screaming in panic. Passengers on the plane were screaming in panic. The pilot yelled, "Flight attendants, brace for impact!"

But Kara surged forward and grabbed the right wing, trying to steady the plane's flight, slow its descent, anything--

A glance toward the body of the plane showed Alex looking out the window, eyes wide and Kara ducked. She couldn't lose focus. But simply guiding the plane by the wing wasn't enough. She ducked down and flew to the plane's underbelly, trying to steady it with both hands, but this meant that she was seeing the world upside down while bearing the tons of weight moving at speed.

She strained, but it was worth it when she heard the pilot say in disbelief, "We're leveling off!"

And that gave Kara a spurt of joy to be followed by a split second of her own panic when she saw the Binder Bridge not far ahead and she realized the plane was flying way too low to miss hitting it. Annoyance took over. "Oh, come on!"

Digging her hands into the metal body of the plane and screaming from the effort she pulled the plane into a diagonal and sent it in between the concrete pilon and the iron cables. It was a tight squeeze and if she had gotten it wrong, she could have taken the whole bridge down with the plane and the cars on the bridge and boats underneath and all.

But she didn't.

She righted the plane with another long scream and ditched the plane in the ice cold water of the river. She submerged under it and fought her way tot he surface, gasping for breath, but even with the water in her ears, she could hear the passengers on the plane applauding and cheering as she climbed onto the wing, water sluicing off her clothes in the cold wind. Her body ached in ways it never had before, but as she stood gasping for breath and feeling the surge of victory running through her veins, she thought, "Is this what Kal-El feels like all the time?"

Then she leaped into the air and flew home.

//

Kara strode, still dripping, into her apartment, elated and cold. She stripped off her wet clothes in the bathroom and stood under the hot shower, reliving the excitement and terror and lightning fast physics decisions, the use of her muscles, the use of her brain.

The terrified beating of the passengers' heartbeats turned to cheering. For her. For what she could do.

For what she had always been able to do, if the people who loved her most had only let her.

It was like she had been living with a small elephant on her chest for the last twelve years and suddenly, Horton had heard a Hoo and gone on walkabout to find it, and now, finally she could breathe freely.

Finally, she turned off the hot water, toweled off and thrown on her comfy clothes. She was starving. She hit her favorite pizza place and counted the minutes until Jessy showed up with her Veggie Lovers, Meat Lovers, and Hawaiian Dream. He no longer asked her if she were "having a party, Ms. Danvers?" and she tipped him better because of it.

So she wrapped up in her sisters night blanket and sat on the couch guzzling calories and watching the news anchors record her victory for the ages.

The news reported on the "unknown individual" being outside the aircraft as it passed through the cables of the Otto Binder Bridge. The unknown individual is considered to be female... And that was just Channel Three.

Channel Seven had reported that "the passengers of Flight 237 seemed to have a guardian angel when what many report to be a female flying form rescued them from certain death."

But a different reporter at the scene had a different take on her adventure. "Guardian angel or human wrecking ball? There is destruction all over Otto Binder Bridge..."

Kara leaped up. "What! Well, you try saving a plane for the first time and see if you don't make a mess!"

The TV paused and Kara turned to see Alex with the remote. Alex! Wonderful, very much alive Alex!

"Oh, my God!" said Alex.

Kara squeeled. "I know!" She jumped up and down. "It's incredible!" She ran to Alex and pulled her into a tight hug, heard Alex's vertebrae crackle.

"Ow!"

"Oooh, sorry! That was, that was too much! I'm just, I'm so excited! I still can't believe I did it!"

"No," said Alex, frowning. "Neither can I. Are you okay?"

"Me? Am I okay? Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"Were you scared? I mean I was scared too, but you, you had to have been terrified because you had no idea I was coming to save you!"

"I need a drink."

"Right! Yes! We need to celebrate!" Kara hurried to the kitchen and poured Alex a fifth of scotch. "It has been so long! I almost forgot how to fly! Well, not how, but more what it feels like. Like scary, but good scary, like the moment right before kissing someone for the first time."

Alex took a sip of the scotch and swallowed, making a face and then taking a deep breath.

Kara didn't even really notice. "And now, I'm not even sure what comes next. Or I am but I'm just afraid of what it means, and if it means what I think it means--"

Alex snapped, "What were you thinking?" She stared at Kara's obvious confusion and set her glass down on the table with a sharp click. She strode to the television, which showed the still of Kara standing, blurred by the lights, on the wing of the plane.

"You exposed yourself to the world. You are out there now, Kara. Everyone will know about you and you can't take that back."

"I, I don't want to. This is what I was talking about. I've always felt the need to help people and I, I finally got that chance. I didn't travel two thousand light years just to be an assistant."

"What if people figure out who you are? What you are? It's not safe for you to do anything like that. Every again."

Kara stared at her, open-mouthed, fighting to find words. Finally she whispered, "Oh... I'm kinda tired. I just carried a plane on my back. I'm gonna go to bed. You should go."

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

And it was just like Alex to get in the last word, but the more Kara thought about it, the less she could believe that it was the last word, but her weariness was much more than an excuse, so finally she decided to sleep on it and see what the morning brought.


	3. When You Have to Choose Your Allies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Maybe this was all too much. Maybe she should rethink everything. There was a whole lot more to this being a superhero than strength and courage and an ability to do complex physics equations in her head in real time, taking into consideration meteorological conditions."

On Monday night, for the first time in years, Kara Zor-El's dreams preceded the destruction of her planet. Instead, her mind's eye was filled with a lingering red light as she passed the windows of her family's house, quietly making her way down to the meeting room where her parents entertained guests or, in this case, family.

Her uncle Jor-El's hair seemed whiter than usual, the lines around his eyes carved deeper. She couldn't hear what he was saying to her parents, but he seemed distressed. Her mother, Alura, had stood suddenly, a statue in blue like the statues of the ancestors of the House of El in their home shrine. She had spoken with great fervor and the only word Kara recognized was her own name.

She stepped into the doorway, catching their attention. Alura had beckoned her, looking proud, so proud. And for a moment, Jor-El had looked infinitely relieved.

//

On Tuesday morning, Kara wok bathed in yellow sunlight, feeling oddly rested and light-hearted. There was a spring to her step as she basked in her sunlit walk from Noonan's to CatCo. In the elevator, CatCo employees were speculating about the mystery woman who had saved the airplane and she struggled to hide her grin and adjusted her glasses nervously. Everyone in the bullpen was staring up at the screens, while several different channels reported universal bafflement.

When she passed Winn's desk, she said, "Pretty cool, huh?"

"A plane-saving lady? How is the world supposed to take her seriously if she can't even come up with a suit? What? Metropolis gets him and what does National City get? Some rookie superhero?"

Kara frowned. She had not given any thought to how people familiar with famous ones would see her. She wasn't Superman or Spiderman or Black Widow or Wonder Woman. She wasn't even Captain America or Batman. She was just, apparently a strong woman who could fly but who didn't give a thought to her image. Maybe this was all too much. Maybe she should rethink everything. There was a whole lot more to this being a superhero than strength and courage and an ability to do complex physics equations in her head in real time, taking into consideration meteorological conditions.

She carried these worries into the morning editorial meeting where Cat Grant was earning her reputation as being a hard-ass employer with an ego as tall as her building, although Kara was willing to concede that the woman's ambition and intelligence matched.

Cat marched around her desk. "Now I know that most of you are used to being second best, but it's new thing to me. The most incredible even in the history of National City and yet we have no exclusive of any kind."

The reporters made their excuses. "There's really not much to go on. The image is low-res."

"Yeah," said another. "She's about five-nine. It's tough to gauge with her height measured up against an airplane."

"Hair color brown!" suggested another. "Or... black..."

James Olsen stepped forward and said easily, "Or maybe her hair's just dirty. You know, from soot, the plane exhaust..."

"James, you make an excellent point. Do you think there's any connection between this hero--" she waved her glasses vaguely at the stills on the viewscreens on the wall above her head.

"And my friend in blue? Hm, I don't know. I mean, not that he's mentioned, but if she's anything like him, she's a hero. Saving people is what they were born to do. She'll be back."

He smiled at Kara, who looked away nervously.

Cat also smiled. "She better be. This girl is the answer. She is exactly what I need to save the Tribune! Besides fatty foods there is nothing people love more than a hero. We are going to blow her up. We will feature her online and in the paper. But we need images, we need video, we need an interview and exclusive content. So go. Go get me that girl!"

They all turned to leave.

"And Keira? Go get me a lettuce wrap."

And as they walked out of the office side by side, James said, "It's funny. That's the first thing he did too. Save a plane, I mean."

And she stood there for a moment, thinking, Do I want to save planes or do I want to save lettuce wraps?

Then she hurried to Winn's desk and said, "Winn, I need to talk to you on the roof."

"The roof?"

//

Winn Schott, Jr. had fallen for Kara Danvers pretty hard the day she showed up at CatCo. He had assumed that she wouldn't last long--none of Cat's assistants lasted more than a few months, and so he had worked hard to help get Kara up to speed on Cat as fast as he could, and they had worked together to figure out how Kara could predict the things that Cat might need her to do so that she was prepared to do them (or finished doing them) in advance. It was five months before Winn noticed that Cat had stopped calling Kara any random women's name that started with a K or a hard C, and stuck with Keira. That's when he knew Kara was going to be just fine.

He had given himself a high five at the realization, knowing exactly how much of that particular victory she owed to his help, although he would never draw it to her attention.

So after spending months friend-zoned, when Kara asked to talk to him on the roof, he couldn't help but feel hopeful, even though he knew the odds were not good for this actually meaning a sudden, romantic change to their relationship.

And he really, really hated heights, but he went. She was waiting for him on the helipad and he said, "Kara? Just, whatever you have to say, can you make it quick? I'm not into being this high up."

"Okay. Winn. I'm going to tell you something about me that only three people in my life know. Can I trust you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course."

"Good. Right. I just really want someone to be excited for me." She adjusted her glasses. "I, um, I haven't. There's something about me that, for most of my life, I've run from it. But last night, I embraced who I am and I don't want to stop."

Winn's mind, like a mechanical bank, felt the penny drop and turn the gears that spun the wheel that deposited the penny in the bank that was labeled: oh, that!

"Oh," he said. "Kara, you're a lesbian! That's why you're not into me. This is great news!"

"I'm not gay! I'm... I'm her!"

Winn stared.

"The woman who saved the plane!"

He grinned. "Oh, yeah. Okay. Sure."

She frowned and strode to the edge of the building.

He said, "Kara, what are you doing? Get away from the ledge! You're going to get hurt!"

And she dropped off the edge of the building like a stone.

He ran as close to the edge as he dared but then he got scared and dizzy and dropped to the roof on his hands and knees. "KARA!"

And before he could despair and be sick she was flying--flying!--back to the roof and landing in the center of the helipad, standing up straight again and adjusting her glasses.

He pushed himself to his feet again. "You're... her..."

"Yup!"

//

If Kara had remembered the first thing about superheroes--or perhaps the third thing after powers and a suit--she would have remembered that superheroes didn't just protect people from accidents or regular human criminals. They also had to keep an eye out for bigger villains, human or alien, who in general pledged to cause havoc, mayhem and a bloody death for anyone who got in their way.

Or was likely to get in their way.

As, for example, superheroes.

Given this easily forgotten law of nature, it would have been no surprise to anyone if they had seen the trucker clawing his frustration into the counter at the truckstop cafe and snarling about getting more coffee.

But the good old friendly gals who poured the coffee at this particular diner were too excited about the new female superhero that their daughters could look up to and they didn't notice that the man also gave them a paltry tip.

(Villain, after all, people. Do keep up.)

He strode out of the cafe and climbed up the ladder into his rig. It looked like an oil or gas tanker but the hollow body was mostly empty. He hit the computer screen and pulled off his baseball cap to let the ridge on the apex of his head get some air.

His superior was angry. "What happened with the plane, Vartox? You were ordered to bring it down."

"Our trap worked. The DEO agents were on board and the bomb detonated."

"Then why aren't they dead?"

"A female. She flew into the sky and caught the plane."

"Who is she?"

"Jor-El saved his child from Krypton's destruction..."

"Alura's daughter..."

"She's working with the humans."

"Twelve years. We've been forced to hide in the shadows. But the general's arrival is imminent. Nothing must interfere. You are instructed to eliminate the human operatives. You can add this girl to the list."

"Can't promise her death won't be public and messy."

"Human casualties are irrelevent."

"Good. And if she is Alura Zor-El's daughter, then she will pay for her mother's debts. And so will her city."

//

Winn didn't remember his mother too well. Penelope Schott had been a tailor like her father before she met Winn Schott, Sr. in a college theater class. He had wanted to learn how to sew in order to make the soft bodies of some of his toys and she had taught him, married him, given birth to their son and eventually taught Winn Jr. before cancer had ravaged the family and taken her from them.

And this was why, unlike most IT guys whose gadgets only manipulated information or images, Winn had a portable sewing machine that he could set up in Kara's apartment as they tried out different styles for her superhero costume.

The first one... wasn't her favorite. Red short shorts and a blue crop top had seemed (to him) like a good idea at the time, but when she came out and modeled it and said, "I am not flying around saving people in this thing. I wouldn't even wear it to the beach. Where's my cape?"

"Capes are lame! Tell your cousin I said so. Actually, never, never do that."

The second one was better: a short red skirt, a tight long-sleeved blue top with a yellow belt in between. She marched up to him barefoot, fidgeting with her glasses. He stared. She took the glasses off.

He stared some more. "You, um, look really pretty without your glasses."

"Winn..."

"Right! To be a superhero, you need a crime. So I hacked into the NCPD. There's a car chase on the 112 Freeway."

"I could do a car chase!"

Well, Kara had thought she could do a car chase. How hard could it be? She just had to follow the police car's siren, flying just a bit above, and pop out ahead of it to stop the car with the perps inside. Right?

Wrong. A double bridge changed the speed and direction of the crosswinds, sending Kara into the mound of dirt, leaving her body print behind for the police to figure out after the fact.

Winn finished sewing the bright red cape, draping it over Kara's shoulders, saying, "A cape helps with aerodynamics! I should have thought of that."

His hacked connection to the NCPD announced, "West National City Bank's reporting a 432 Sixth and Spring. Suspect's armed and dangerous."

Winn looked up at her. "So... you sure you're bulletproof?"

"Hope so!"

And while most people would have found a way to test that hypothesis before going into the field, Kara just had faith that anything her cousin could do, she could do. Her faith was not unfounded.

She strode purposefully toward the bank as the three perps shot their way out, and all their bullets bounced off of her. She beat them up and left them in a pile, but came back with her cape full of holes and with questions about using bright red Doc Martens as her footwear of choice.

And that led to the third-time's-the-charm version of her suit. Her cape was now a structured polymer, her dark red boots protected her to above the knees and her house crest now covered her chest.

Winn said, "This one has the S for Super, like your cousin."

Kara looked in the mirror, feeling nostalgic for the years on Krypton, when all of her family wore the crest on their clothes every day. "It's not an S," she said. "My family's coat of arms. The House of El."

The NCPD hookup reported a four-alarm fire.

Winn said, "I'm assuming you can't catch on fire..."

Kara flew above National City. She was slowly getting used to recognizing the city from above the same way she recognized it from below, on foot. But that was by day and this was by night. The lights of the city emphasized different things that the simple outlines of buildings did. It was taking longer than she hoped to match up the maps in her head.

She paused above City Hall, listening for the direction of the sirens, reoriented and sped off to the west, where she soon saw the fire raging. But as she flew she felt a sharp pain and then another one and a sudden overwhelming weakness and she started to fall, blacking out before she hit the ground.


	4. When All You Want to Do is Protect and Serve

The last three days had been some of the longest of Alex Danvers' life, and given that that included the first few days with Kara Zor-El as her adoptive sister, her first months in medical school with her mother always calling to check up on her, and the first nine months of hard-core DEO training with Agent Vasquez, that was really saying something.

Director Hank Henshaw was normally a quiet, serious man, given more to frowns than any other facial expression, hard, cynical and tough enough to be the head of the US government's darkest of secret organizations. Everybody knew what the CIA and NSA did. Many people had heard at least of the possibility of the existence of SHIELD. Nobody knew about the DEO. And that was how Hank liked it.

The Department of Extra-Normal Operations was so far under the radar as to disassemble the radar as its agents passed by like ninja ghosts.

And sitting in the command center of the desert headquarters of the DEO while Vasquez scribbled furiously in her threat assessment notebooks and Director Henshaw paced back and forth endlessly, like Captain Ahab, Alex watched the newsfeeds showing her sister in a variety of iterations of female versions of Superman's uniform and she thought she was likely to scream.

So far, at the very least, Eliza had apparently not heard about any of this. And so far, Kara had in fact turned out to be bulletproof and not horrible at hand-to-hand fighting, although she telegraphed her moves and acted out of emotion far too much for Alex's comfort. But up until this night, Hank had held off from doing anything. It wasn't until the fire started that he ordered Alex and Vasquez to prepare the Blackhawks and the K-rifles, pulled the kryptonite cuffs out of storage.

"But sir," Alex had said, "There's no way to know if--"

Henshaw growled. "Vasquez says it's 90%. Practically a certainty. Now get up there and take her in."

"Yes, sir!" Alex had responded, thinking, well, at least if she was on the op she could make sure that Kara was treated right.

Vasquez gave her a look that said she also had made scenario analyses about Alex's response to the scenario analysis for Kara. Alex followed orders.

Alex followed orders and she shot her own Kryptonian sister with kryptonite, shot her out of the air. She was not happy about it, but she had done it. Now she would have to see what the consequences of that choice were going to be.

Kara shuddered in her restraints and her eyelids fluttered. Alex gritted her teeth and watched Henshaw taunt her sister.

Kara pulled at the restraints glowing green around her wrists.

Henshaw said, "Low-grade kryptonite, radioactive material from your home planet. It weakens you.

"Where am I? Who are you?"

"Name is Hank Henshaw. And I believe you already know Agent Danvers."

Reluctantly Alex strode into Kara's sight. She unlocked the cuffs saying, "She doesn't need those." She tried to take Kara's free hand, but Kara pulled it away and diverted her eyes, taking in the long low cement room with only her gurney in the center.

Henshaw said, "Welcome to the DEO, the Department of Extra-Normal Operations. The DEO monitors and protects Earth from extraterrestrial presence and/or invasion. That means you."

Kara sat up, hesitantly, avoiding Alex's helping hands. 

Henshaw said, "You're up? Good. I want to show you something."

An agent in black let Kara lean on her as the four of them moved through the DEO maze until they came to a basement and Kara saw the pod she had arrived on Earth in.

Henshaw said, "Your ship. We keep it here as a reminder of the day you crashed on Earth. You're the reason for all of this."

"Me? But, but my cousin was here two dozen years before me."

"And it's his arrival that triggered the need for this organization. We realized that we weren't alone in the universe and we might soon be getting more... immigrants. Sure enough, you came along. And with you, Fort Rozz."

"Fort Rozz?" said Kara.

"Krypton's maximum security prison. Banished to the Phantom Zone, same place your ship got stuck but, like yours, it didn't stay there. We're not sure how your pod got loose. What we do know is this: you pulled Fort Rozz with you. When it crashed, the alien convicts, the worst criminals in the galaxy, they all escaped. And you brought them here. These beings, some of them have powers from your darkest nightmares." He turned and led them back through the maze, back to command central, where viewscreens above their heads showed the computerized rapsheets of aliens. "For over a decade, they've stayed hidden but in the last year, many have been emerging, making themselves known."

Behind Kara, Alex said, "They're planning something. We're just not sure what it is yet."

"The plane," said Kara. "That wasn't an accident. They were trying to kill you. I can help you stop them."

"How?" asked Henshaw. "You couldn't even stop us from capturing you?"

"I'm still learning!"

"Our job is keeping people in the dark about alien life on Earth, and nothing says covert operation like a flying woman in a red skirt."

"They know about my cousin. They don't fear him!"

"Many people do. It's just not popular to admit it. You want to help? Go back to getting someone's coffee." He picked up a file folder and walked off.

Kara turned to walk away. Alex hurried after her, saying, "I know you're mad, you're hurt. I wanted to tell you every single day--"

Kara turned on her. "No, instead, you told me every single day not to be who I am."

"You have to listen to me!"

"I can't! This just feels like one big coincidence, doesn't it? You working here hunting down aliens, me being one? I can't help but think that the real reason you were recruited was because of me."

"They recruited me because of my bioengineering background, which makes me an expert in alien physiology. And yeah, it helps that I shared a bathroom with one."

Kara sneered. "I'm leaving now. Unless you want to try to stop me. Which I wouldn't."

And Kara stalked off. Henshaw came up behind Alex. "I know you don't want to hear this, Agent Danvers, but she's dangerous. You above all people should know that."


	5. When You Need Someone to Have Your Back

It took Kara time: time to fly back to National City, time to change back into a pink shirt and red pants that made her feel less exposed as a superhero. Time to get a soy latte and hurry to CatCo. Time to worry about her sister and her sister's boss. Time to wonder about how her day was likely to only get worse.

When she reached the top floor, the story on all the TV screens was all about how Cat Grant had named the new mystery female superhero....  
Supergirl.

Not Superwoman. Not Steelwoman. Super-Girl. Kara's jaw dropped and she stormed into Cat's office, tossed down her bag and Cat's breakfast, and yelled, "Supergirl? We can't name her that!"

Cat spun around in her chair and spread her arms over her desk. "We. Didn't."

Kara's sense of self-preservation kicked in belatedly. "Right. Uh. Sorry. It's just, uh, I just don't want to minimize the importance of this! A female superhero! Shouldn't she be called Super...Woman?"

"Sorry, darling, I just can't hear you over the loud color of your cheap pants."

Kara began to pace anxiously. "If we call her Supergirl, something less than what she is, doesn't that make us guilty of being anti-feminist? Didn't you say she was a hero?"

Cat finally looked up. "I'm the hero. I stuck a label on the side of this girl I branded her. She'll forever be linked to CatCo, to the Tribune, to me. And what do you think is so wrong with the word 'girl'? I'm girl. And your boss, and successful, and rich, and hot, and smart. So if you perceive Supergirl as anything less than excellent, isn't the real problem you?"

Kara couldn't think of a thing to say.

Cat said, "And if you're so smart, can you give me one reason why I shouldn't fire you?"

James Olsen strode in carrying a blue folder. "I printed it!" he crowed. He turned to Kara, "And it's in even higher resolution than you hoped for."

"James," said Cat, annoyed. "You are interrupting a very craftily-worded termination." She made shooing motions with one hand.

James said, "Well, Kara wanted to surprise you, but she has to tell her friend that works at West National City Bank. The branch that got robbed?"

Kara was nodding seriously, having no idea what he was talking about. "Right! Right! I went there! It took me a while to park. The one way streets are so confusing!"

James cleared his throat.

Kara said, "You tell it so much better!"

James said, "Kara convinced her source to let us use a photo that she captured." He handed the photo to Cat. It was one iteration back from the current uniform, the one with the bright red Doc Martens, and no crest.

Cat gawked. "You got a clean image of Supergirl? Keira, if you can't take credit when you do something well, you are going to be at the bottom of the pile forever. But Mazel Tov. You bought yourself another day."

Kara and James exited Cat's office together. Kara said, "I was handling it!"

"Yeah, was your plan to get yelled at and fired? 'Cuz that was working."

"I don't need you or anyone else to fight my battles for me!"

Suddenly Kara's ears when on overload. A male voice said in her head, "I'm communicating at 50,000 Hertz. If you can hear this, you were not born on this Earth."

James saw her wincing. "Are you okay?"

Kara nodded. "Uh, yeah, I just have a headache. I'm going to get some water."

She hurried away. The voice continued. "Painful isn't it? The humans will face ten times this pain if you don't do something about it. Meet at the National City Power Plant. How many innocent people will have to die until you prove that you're not a coward?"

Kara hurried to the roof.

"Daughter of Alura!"

She threw off her glasses and tore off her clothes, revealing the crest of the House of El, and leaped into the sky. It took her less than five minutes to get the plant and as soon as she landed among the buildings, she tried using her X-ray vision to find the man behind the voice. No joy. Then she focused her hearing.

"Clever," she said, "picking a location lined with lead. But I can hear your heartbeat."

She had barely finished talking when the sound of a body landing behind her made her turn directly into the punch that the man sent to her jaw. She landed on the ground in front of him.

He said, "On my planet, females bow before males."

Kara pushed herself up to stand. "This isn't your planet."

"You look like Alura."

"How do you know the name of my mother?"

"You don't easily forget the name of the woman who condemned you to prison."

"Fort Rozz?"

"She was our judge, and jailor. I can't kill her, so killing you will have to do."

She flew straight at him and pushed him through a wall of concrete. He jumped back up. They traded punches and then he grabbed Supergirl by the throat and threw her into one of the buildings.

To say she landed hard would be an understatement. But then he was leaping through the hole in the ceiling that her body had made and was throwing her across the room.

"Just because you wear that symbol doesn't mean you're him. Fighting him would be an honor. Fighting you is just exercise. Do you actually think that you can stop me? That you can stop any of us?"

She pushed herself off the floor but again he grabbed her and threw her, this time out of the building. She landed on a truck full of pipes. He leaped down and tore the strange axe off his back, swiped it at her. She ducked the first time but then he threw it at her, cutting her arm. He raced up to wear she lay and ground his foot into her chest.

"Now you know what it's like to bleed. Soon your whole city will bleed." Then he bent down and started to choke her. Just as her vision was starting to dim, an explosion happened behind him and he leaped up and away. Above the exhaust towers, she saw a helicopter, and a figure in black rappelling down a rope to the ground.

The figure took off the black helmet. Alex.

Alex hit her comm. "Trap One, pursue the hostile." She knelt at Kara's side. "Hey. Hey, I'm here. I got you. I got you."

And she held Kara tight in the truck the entire way back to the desert base.


	6. When You Realize That Everything You Assumed Was Wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She had done the best she could and although she always wanted to be in charge, to have things to do, to make things right, to protect people, for that elastic, endless sixty seconds, Alex was done.
> 
> She had done the best she could. She had learned of worlds most humans never learned about. She had flown. She had tried to be perfect and almost succeeded. And she had protected her little sister from being revealed to the world, taught her the skills of concealment that would protect her for the rest of her very long alien life.
> 
> Was it enough? Not by most people's standards. She had never found romantic love. She had never come to terms with her mother. But one of the things she had learned in training with Susan Vasquez and Hank Henshaw was that she couldn't save everybody. You aimed at zero casualties, you aimed at 100% mission completion. But impossible standards of perfection had never served her before, and she was, just for this one, last interminable minute, okay with the idea.
> 
> And then the plane had leveled off. She had looked out the window and seen her sister guiding the plan, had felt the plane turn sideways, felt it land in the water, seen Kara pull herself onto the wing, and then fly away."

At the base, Alex asked Vasquez to debrief the troops while she herself supported Kara on their way down to the lab. She threw offer black coat, threw on her white lab coat and quickly scrubbed her hands. It was more habit than anything. She was pretty sure that anything she might have on her hands would not affect Kara's Kryptonian constitution.

With tweezers she plucked small pieces of debris out of the wound and dropped them into a glass bottle, and Kara's skin healed instantly.

Kara winced. "I've never pain like that before. I've never felt pain."

"You're not indestructible, Kara." She dropped the bottle into the analysis tube next to the computer."

Henshaw, as always, was sarcastic. "Nice move nearly letting that alien cut you in half." To Alex, he said, "If we can ID his weapon, it might give us a way to defeat him. Look at that!"

The computer generated an image of the shard from the alien axe. Henshaw grinned and took the specimen away. "You did help!" But even then, he sounded sarcastic.

Left alone in the lab, Kara looked at her sister. "Did you know about my mom? That she was the one who locked up all those aliens..."

Alex stripped off her rubber gloves. "It's why I didn't want you doing out there. Showing this, showing yourself. The Fort Rozz escapees would do anything to get revenge on your mother, and the only way they can do that now is to hurt you. I'm trying to protect you."

Kara's face, normally so sunny, just looked sad and lost. She said, "You were right. The world doesn't need me." And she walked away.

//

Before Alex Danvers got an alien little sister, her dreams at night were like those of any other fifteen year old: surfing, being late for school, taking an exam she hadn't studied for, following a flock of butterflies across a field, only to turn into a butterfly herself and fly away. She had never dreamed about aliens.

After Kara's arrival, that changed.

Part of it, the first year, probably had to do with how often she was woken in the middle of the night by Kara whimpering or even screaming. Eliza and Jeremiah had explained about trauma, and eventually when Kara's grasp of English was more nuanced, she had described to Alex what a planet looked like as it was coming apart. After that, the Danvers had two girls dreaming of planetary destruction, but only until Kara had learned to paint in school and had started coming home and painting landscapes of Krypton and other worlds she had visited. Then, for years, Alex had dreamed about visiting far-flung civilizations, flying in spaceships, explaining Earth customs to aliens far stranger looking than Kara.

Then, in college, the other dreams started. Dreams about chasing Kara down a road or through a forest and losing her. Holding her hand tightly in a crowd, but somehow letting it slip away, hearing Eliza yell for Alex having let her sister go out too far in the water and drown. Until she began training to work with the DEO, he had not dreamed of flying in years.

In the new dreams, sometimes she was flying the helicopter. Sometimes she was the helicopter. Sometimes the dreams were like memories of flying after dark with Kara, and although in those dreams there would almost always come a moment when she was terrified that Kara would let her go or drop her, still they always started with her feeling nothing but delight.

And then the planning for the convention in Geneva. And then boarding the plane, feeling nothing except a sense of adventure that airplanes always gave her. And then the takeoff, and the strange thing that gravity did where it tried hard to hold you down, but then the plane achieved speed and the gravity fell away with the ground.

And then the strange sound, and the sight of fire under the wing. And then she was comforting the woman in the seat next to her who was panicking and praying the Lord's prayer very loudly. And then Alex sat back, closed her eyes and sought to calm her beating heart.

It might have been only a minute, a very long minute, but for that minute, Alex was strangely fine. She had done the best she could and although she always wanted to be in charge, to have things to do, to make things right, to protect people, for that elastic, endless sixty seconds, Alex was done.

She had done the best she could. She had learned of worlds most humans never learned about. She had flown. She had tried to be perfect and almost succeeded. And she had protected her little sister from being revealed to the world, taught her the skills of concealment that would protect her for the rest of her very long alien life.

Was it enough? Not by most people's standards. She had never found romantic love. She had never come to terms with her mother. But one of the things she had learned in training with Susan Vasquez and Hank Henshaw was that she couldn't save everybody. You aimed at zero casualties, you aimed at 100% mission completion. But impossible standards of perfection had never served her before, and she was, just for this one, last interminable minute, okay with the idea.

And then the plane had leveled off. She had looked out the window and seen her sister guiding the plan, had felt the plane turn sideways, felt it land in the water, seen Kara pull herself onto the wing, and then fly away.

And in the nights that had passed between then and now, the nightmares had come back, all of them, all mixed up. She was racing through a dark forest hand in hand with Kara, only to come to a precipice, lose her sister's hand and watch her fall away into darkness and death, and then the world was ripping apart and sending shards of a living--dying--planet out into space.

And she woke up every time, pointing out to herself that Kara would have no problem falling off the side of a precipice because she could fly, but it didn't really help.

Every night, she woke up yelling, sweating, shivering. She had to force herself not to call Kara. Her sister wasn't listening to her when she was being rational, logical. There was no way Kara would be able to handle Alex being needy. Because that's what it was. Neediness. Weakness.

That was what she had thought. And then...

And then she had rappelled from a helicopter to the ground to save her hard-as-steel little alien sister, had hugged her tight from National City to the desert base, had pulled a piece of alien metal from her sister's arm, and had, apparently, convinced her sister that she wasn't needed, that the world didn't need her.

And Alex Danvers badass doctor/scientist/secret agent was sure of only a few things, but one of them was that Earth really, really needed Kara Danvers.

And if Kara Danvers needed to be Supergirl in order to believe in herself as Kara Danvers...

"Vasquez? Can you take my shift? I have to do fallout duty with Kara. She needs me."

//

She went to National City, went to Kara's loft apartment, and swallowed her pride. She knocked on the door. "Kara? It's me. Can we talk?"

The pause went on, but she knew Kara too well. "I know you can see me. I know what you're thinking. That this is all your fault? But it's not."

Still, no answer. Alex sighed, bit the bullet. She said, "Before you came to live with us, I was the star. But then, how could I compete with you, with someone who could touch the stars? You know, I was happy when you decided not to use your powers. You know, you feeling like less, somehow it... made me feel like more. And now, the world needs you to fly, Kara."

Finally, the door opened. Kara still looked defeated. "I can't, Alex. I can't do it."

But Alex remembered her training with Vasquez in the DEO, when she had to push past physical limitations and psychological limitations to overcome a superior opponent. And she had. She said, "Yeah, you can. Your family believes in you."

Kara sighed hopelessly. "I know you do..."

"I don't mean me," said Alex, reaching into her bag and pulling out an oddly shaped metal cannister.

Kara took it from her, staring. "That's Kryptonese writing."

"Hank and his old team recovered it from the pod that brought you to Earth."

They set it up in Kara's living room. Hesitantly, Kara pushed the on button and suddenly a hologram of Alura, her mother, was standing there, so far from Krypton, standing as if alive in Kara's Earth living room.

"Mom!"

"Kara, my brave daughter. By now you have become the woman I knew you would grow up to be. And though you were brought to Earth to protect young Kal-El, your destiny is not tied to his."

Alex watched Kara's face as she faced her mother's image. The scene was so intimate, so much about family--real family--that she quietly stepped backwards, intending to leave, but Kara's hand moved backward to grasp hers and keep her there.

Kara's mother kept talking. "There is no correct path in life. You will lose your way many times. What's important is that you find your way back to the brave girl you always were. Be wise. Be strong. And always be true to yourself."

Alex watched Kara's tears, watched her step forward as if to touch her mother, watched the image disappear. But Alex saw a different in Kara and it made her smile.

Kara turned around. "So what do we do now?"

"First thing's first," said Alex. "You need to change."

//

Kara flew them from National City to the desert base, and Alex had never felt happier to be not in charge of her own locomotion. The wind that whipped their faces was cold but refreshing, and Kara's impossible strong arms holding her tight was a reminder of the past, the good, solid past when she had two parents and a future holding infinite possibilities.

They landed and marched into the DEO side by side. The control room, dark as usual, emphasized the brightly lit computer screens.

Henshaw saw them came in and led, as always, with snark. "It's Agent Danvers and her sister from another planet."

Alex said, "She's here to help us fight Vartox."

"I told you, I don't trust aliens."

"There's no one I trust more," said Alex. "Like her cousin, she was sent here, too, to help us. And if you want anymore of my help? We're going to let her Vartox

In the command center, Vasquez turned, and Alex noted with a stray part of her mind that Vasquez wasn't in uniform, looked instead like maybe she had been pulled into work while she had been on a date...

"I found Vartox!" she said. "Sir? Ma'ams. The sliver of metal you extracted from Supergirl's arm. Vartox's axe has a unique nuclear thumbprint. Satellites had him moving toward the city."

Supergirl approached the computer monitors. "Vartox said he was ready to start killing humans."

Henshaw said, "Order a strike team to intercept."

But Supergirl responded, "Your men will not be able to stop him."

"Thank you for your opinion, Ms. Danvers," said Henshaw in a way that made it clear that he had no use for her opinion."

Kara strode over and faced him. "Director Henshaw. People of this city will die because of something I did. I started this. You have to let me stop it."

Henshaw stared at her. Finally he said, "Make sure you win."


	7. When It Comes Down To a Fight

Kara flew above the highway into National City, being guided by Agent Vasquez via her earpiece, watching out for the alien's truck.

In her ear, she heard Henshaw ask, "Have you got eyes on the target?"

She hovered, honing in on the heartbeat she had heard at the power plant. It led her eyes to a tanker driving below her and she swooped down to land in front of it. "I got him!"

She stood firm and the tanker plowed into her but she remained unmoved. Fire rose from the truck and objects, including her alien, went flying past her. She turned and strode toward him. He pushed himself up off the ground.

He said, "You shouldn't have come back for more."

Kara leapt into flight straight at him. He sidestepped her and grabbed her by one boot so she kicked him in the face with the other. He went down so she flew up and then dropped and planted a haymaker into the side of his face. He caught her follow-up punch with one hand and punched her in the face with the other.

In her earpiece as she spun away from the blow she heard Henshaw's voice say, "She's not strong enough."

And Alex answer back with a smile in her voice that gave Kara--Supergirl--strength: "Why? Because she's just a girl? That's what we were counting on."

The alien pulled his axe out of the asphalt, but Supergirl was faster, flying at him feet first and sending him through the flaming remains of his tanker truck.

In her earpiece, Alex was explaining, "I analyzed the metal of the axe? It's powered by a self-generating atomic charge, reaching up to twenty-five hundred degrees."

"How does that help?" asked Henshaw.

"If it gets any hotter than that, it's gonna explode. She just has to get close enough to do her thing."

And Kara--Supergirl--was running through the wreckage of the tanker to get close enough fast enough.

She punched him as he pushed himself up to standing, dodged his wildly aimed axe blows. He landed a solid punch, but overbalanced and fell to one knee, which allowed her to kick him in the face. He used the axe in his hand as a way to deliver a heavier blow to her back and when she tried to fly away, he grabbed her foot and dragged her back, slamming her into the pavement, cracking the tar as she landed. He hefted his axe.

She gasped, "Stop. I give up. I don't want to die."

"Give your mother my regards." He lifted the axe above his head brought it down. Supergirl caught the haft in both hands before the axe blade reached her.

In her earpiece, Alex said, "Kara, do it now!"

Supergirl focused her X-ray vision on the blade, but even as her heat vision made the axe begin to change color from silver to angry red, she felt his strength pressing the axe down, centimeter by centimeter. "It's not working," she yelled. "I can't do it!"

But in her ear Alex said, "It's why you were sent here. I believe that now. You have to believe it too!"

Kara kept at it. The axe turned orange. The alien screamed in pain. Finally, there was an explosion and the weight on Kara's hands disappeared. It took a few seconds for her vision to go back to normal, but then she pulled herself out of the small crater she had made and she pushed herself up to standing.

She managed to stumble forward to where the alien lay, gasping for breath among the wreckage of his truck and the road.

"It's over," she said.

"You have no idea what's coming!" Then he pulled a large sliver of his axe and plunged it into his own heart. Almost immediately, his body... sagged.

In her earpiece, Supergirl heard DEO agents clapping and cheering. Then she heard Alex's voice. "She followed your orders. She won."

And Henshaw said, "Yeah. This time."

"Director Henshaw. I wasn't only recruited because of my sister, was I?"

"Yeah, she's why you got in. You? Are why you get to stay."


	8. When You Actually Survive to Tell the Tale

Kara strode into CatCo with uncharacteristic self-confidence. Winn met her at the elevator. He said, "If I'm to believe the comments on that website I told you about, a female vs. reptilian boxing match in the desert?"

"I'll tell you all about it in our next crime-fighting lunch hour."

"Wait, so the Superfriends are back?"

"We are not calling ourselves that."

She hurried to catch up with James. "Do you have time for lunch?"

"You must be hungry. You probably burned a lot of calories fight that axe-wielding alien. Meet me on the roof." He grinned.

She hurried up the stairs to the roof, but he was there first, holding a shoebox, still wearing a shit-eating grin. 

"You knew? He told you?

"Well, he knew I was trying to expand my horizons, so, as a favor, he asked me to expand them here, in National City, hang out. Be near you."

"Wait, so he wanted me to do this?"

James smiled and looked away.

"So why didn't he just tell me?"

"Because he wanted you to choose it for yourself. Same way he did. That's what makes a hero, Kara."

She sighed.

He handed her the box. "Here. From him."

She took it and pulled the lid off. The dark red material brought back flashbacks and tears to her eyes. She recognized it the moment she touched it. "It's the blanket he was wrapped in when he was a baby."

"Apparently," said James, "this cape won't shred."

She tried hard not to cry, managed to whisper, "Thank you!"

James said, "He's really proud of you. Me too. Now, don't you have a city to protect? You know, up, up and away?"

//

She stripped down to the suit and leapt up to the sky, slowly learning the streets of National City by day so that she would be better able to navigate their dangers by night. As she flew she reflected:

"I was sent her to protect my cousin. But, turns out, he didn't need my protection. But there is a whole planet full of people who do. Earth doesn't have just one hero anymore. Now, it has me. Now, it has Supergirl!"

And down below, while the humans went about their jobs, there were aliens who looked up into the sky and saw the flash of red and blue, and thought, Oh, yes, our revenge upon Alura Zor-El will be very sweet indeed.


End file.
